Setting up for Homse

Would be very cool if they end up getting this buck on opening weekend!

The Dominant Predator crew heads out to find Homse, the whitetail chosen to go after for Missouri's opener. Homse is a stud of a 4 1/2 caught heading to the corn field just under a week before the opening day of Missouri's bow season. The blind is in place for Homse to make that same mistake.

VIP Dock Fishing

At our lake we have a special dock called the VIP dock. The dock and the surrounding area is a fish santuary on a very heavily fished lake. We feed the fish bluegills, fatheads, shiners, and fish food from this dock, and actually visiting the VIP dock is one of the most popular activities at the lake. Lots of BIG fish live there.

Anyhow, it was Tyden's 10 year birthday party this afternoon. We surprised him with a bucket full of 5 inch bluegills, a circle hook tied onto a shimano medium action rod and reel, and headed over to the VIP dock.

We had the line broke twice, but managed to land a few good ones!




Happy Birthday Tyden, you just made Chef Todd extremely jealous!

Deer, Bear, Elk, Airplane

My Aunt Rachel Sauder is a photographer out near Hanna City, Il. Anyhow on Tuesday I sent her up in an airplane to snap some aerial photos for a client to see some progress on his lake and land renovation project.

I was amazed at how reasonable it was to rent an aerial photography airplane from Canton Airport! We will be doing a bunch more aerial photography in the very near future, just let me know if your fairly close to Canton, IL and I am sure we can snap some pics of your place too.

Here are some cool trail camera pics sent to me recently from the tri-county area.

Coming through, get outta dad's way!


On Wednesday night I made it out to Edwins place just before dark to start sighting in our rifles! Their pond is perhaps the best trout fishing pond in Illinois come October, but not this year. It is getting completely drained, scooped out and enlarged....... Edwin, Rand, Dave, Jared, and I are headed to Colorado this November to hunk Elk!! My first trip out west hunting and I am very much looking forward to it! November 5-11th. We only had enough time to get our guns sighted in about 2 inches high at 100 yards. Next week or two we will start zeroing in at 200 yards!

Thursday night I finished up near Lewiston and was in the mood to snap some photos. Here is the backyard of a new cabin a client is building on his awesome pond.

If you walk in the cabin and turn to the right you are greeted by this amazing grizzly bear and mountain scene!

Here is a pic of the cabin from the front:

Earlier in the week Allen and I finished building this sweet dock out near Congreville. Still some landscaping to do leading up to the dock, but man is this ever a cool lake with a little island off to the right. This lake has got boone and crocket gills, great crappies, catfish, walleyes, perch, stripers, walleyes, tiger muskies, and rainbow trout. You know, the typical midwestern pond gamefish!

We are building this pond this week as well. This is actually for my brother Chad behind his house. It is going to be 1/3 acre swimming and smallmouth pond. Just wait about 2 years and I am gonna have a bunch of 3 lb smallmouth bass and 1 lb yellow perch swimming between your legs when you jump in! (his wife Julie doesnt read the blog, I dont think she has an idea how many fish are going to be in this baby!). Should have some updated pics of this project early next week it will be filling with water hopefully. I already have been raising the smallmouths for this pond all summer so I cant wait for water!!!

Looks like we are finally getting some rain! We might have a chance at actually growing some deer crops this fall! Speaking of that, I was in Paris, Illinois electrofishing a 6 acre pond today and the guy had some of the most amazinhg food plots imaginable!! His 9 acre bean plot and 4 acre clover plot looked tasty even to me....I was thinking about some ranch dressing and a fork for a nice salad, they looked delicious. Unfortunately his fish and pond wasnt in such good shape. They need some help, but with just a few tweeks like a bunch of harvesting, some fresh genetics, a winter drawdown, an aeration system and a bit of bass structure and his pond will be hopping in no time.

Are You Ready for Deer Season?

Dominant Predator boys are for sure! They have spent the summer prepping deer stands, food plots, scouting deer, and shooting their bows. Lets see if it pays off for them once their Missouri season opens September 15th and their Illinois season opens October 1st.

Here is another video about them talking about early season hunting strategies going into small bedding areas for big bucks!

With the season closing in we are thinking strategy. Zach talks about hunting bedding stands early and Shane breaks down one of our new stands. Jimmy closes up with our scouting plans for the up coming week.

What do you think about their strategy of hunting bedding stands early in the season? I will let you know what I think about 2 weeks into the season after I see how it works for them.

Bob Lusk The Pond Boss Visits

On Wednesday afternoon I had the privelege of picking up Bob Lusk at the Peoria Airport. Bob has been designing lakes and growing monster fish across the United States for the last 32 years and is the pioneer of lake and pond management! He is the editor of Pond Boss Magazine and the owner of the world famous Pond Boss Forum. If you have any pond, fish, weed, or wildlife question you just pop on the forum and ask your question and within a few hours some of the smartest people in the nation will have some answers or advice for you. Let me just say that if you are a pond owner, land owner, hunter, fisherman, or wildlife enthusiast, you absolutely are missing out if you do not get Pond Boss Magazine sent to your home or office. It is the best resource on the planet for learning about your outdoor passions. When I stumbled across Pond Boss in 2005 I became addicted to learning from their experiences.


So anyhow flash forward a few years and the pond boss himself came to visit and help me with a big project. Basically the magnitude of this visit can best be described as a basketball player working with Michael Jordan, or a race car fan hanging out with a famous driver (I dont know which ones are or were good), or a football player training with Jerry Rice or Walter Payton.... Basically you get my point, but just in case you dont I will keep going like an ice skater skating with Kristy Yamagucchi, or a hockey player slapping a puck with Wayne Gretzky, or a gymnasticker gymnasticking with Mary Lou Retton.....the list can go on and on

Straight from the airport we head to Jim's Steakhouse to hang out and feast on some of Chef Todd's food! The man can flat out cook and I have a bunch of pictures a few paragraphs down to prove it. Anyhow this pic of some steak and crab from Jim's will have to do for now.



So Thursday and Friday I spent with Bob designing the best fishing lake in Illinois for a client complete with its very own state of the art fish hatchery for raising forage minnows, crayfish, and occasionally gamefish like muskies, stripers, smallmouths, etc as needed. This lake is going to flat out be the best fishing lake anyone has ever seen or can even imagine. We are putting alot of thought into this design!

Saturday morning I loaded up my boat and fishing gear at 4 am, took Bob to the airport at 5:30 am, called up Kelly Presley to let me into his bait shop at 6:30 am and pulled up at a clients place in Fulton County at 8 am.

Chef Todd and Chad and Lee helped us take a bunch of people fishing and we caught some awesome fish with some monster crappies for it being the 95 degrees outside. I only was able to snap a couple pics and it will be weeks before all the other pics start trickling in so this is all you get:





Then we cleaned and cooked up the fish along with some bacon wrapped scallops, crab rangoons, shrimp skewers, oysters rockefellar, Ahi tuna, apple cinnamon chicken breasts, and filet mignon. All I can say is WOW, Chef was able to pull all that off in the midst of a big thunderstorm with lots of mud, basically out in the great outdoors with some make shift shelters and a leaky roof.












Then on Sunday and Monday I stayed out at the lake and played with the kids. Was different than usual though, the big storm brought in a massive cold front so we didnt swim or fish, we just made fires and actually wore sweatshirts! I can't say the cold weather felt great, because I was uncomfortably cold and the wind was blowing. But was a nice much needed relaxng weekend nonetheless.

Justin, Lee, and Dave started our shoreline rehabilitation project over the weekend. To prevent erosion and to make a nice patch around our lake, we are putting in a trail that will be rip rapped around the entire lake. I can't wait to be able to walk around the lake and catch fish hanging out by the rocks!! Just an FYI for those of you thinking about rip rap, we found a source for reject concrete that will be our base layer and will be putting it out quite a ways in the water, then we will cover it up with this nice rip rap stone for looks! The concrete costs about $15 per ton and the stone about $20 per ton delivered. Semi trucks can hold about 20 tons. In this picture, the reject concrete is on the right and the stone rip rap is on the left.


My lake has never been good for fishing from the shore because of no good access and lots of overgrown erosion. With this path around the lake I will be able to easily fish around the whole lake without needing to get in a boat!! This will take lots of pressure off our docks and create awesome fishing opportunities for lots of people who just want to fish for a few minutes and not get in a boat! Here is the beginning of the creation of the trail, I will update with more pics as we complete this project!


Just as I was leaving the lake this afternoon, Justin and Allen came up with this monster catfish:


Also I found this snake out sunning itself on the top of our dam, anyone know what kind it is? I am terrible at snake ID.


Hope you all had a great Labor Day weekend! Looks like the hottest summer ever has officially lost its grip and now hopefully we can enjoy 2 months of perfect 70 degree weather!! Fatten up fish, you only got a few weeks of good eatin left!!